[00:00:04] Broadcasting live from atop the Rocky Mountains, the crossroads of the West, you are listening to the Liberty Roundtable Radio Talk Show. I think they've got the Straits of Hormos open. I pray that's true. Gold and silver seem like they're down, but really, what does that mean for the dollar?
[00:00:28] We're talking Honest Money Report, ladies and gentlemen, in mere seconds. Yeah, the Fed leave rates unchanged. They're concerned about inflation. New Americans are fighting that this might be the highest electricity bills for the summer they've ever seen. Trump says negotiations are finished. They're all good. We just signed, but if they don't cooperate, I'm going to just rain down bombs on their heads.
[00:00:55] White House signals Congress will indeed have a chance to review the agreement. I don't know that anybody's seen it. We've just heard about it, right? United States and G7 allies met this week. We'll talk about that. We're just getting started. Happy to have you along, my fellow Americans. I'm Sam Bushman, and I've got our dear brother for the Honest Money Report, Heath Perkins, on the line. And for the past 50 years, the Rust family, three generations, have been helping people understand precious metals,
[00:01:21] and Heath has been alongside with them. He's not old enough to be with them for more than 50 years, though. And nevertheless, he's been with them for a long time, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome back to the Liberty Roundtable Live, Heath. Thanks for having me on. Appreciate being here, Sam. You're very welcome. So there's so much to talk about. Let's do the Honest Money Report first. Where the heck is gold and silver sitting, sir? Gold is sitting at $4,258.80, and silver is sitting at $67.06.
[00:01:52] What do you think that means, then? Because that's quite a bit down from what we've seen, but it's still way up from where it's been for literally decades, right? Sure. Yep, still up. It seems like globally the dollar is gaining strength due to these moves and Trump kind of getting his way over in the straight.
[00:02:14] And that increase in the dollar's strength is kind of shifting other assets around, including gold and silver. So gold and silver are down right now. All right. Oil seems to be down, too. And strangely, even though I wouldn't put my currency on oil or I wouldn't have the petrodollar, at the same time, I will say this, right now at least it's tracking relatively parallel, right? Yes. Correct.
[00:02:44] Yeah. Oil is down about $74 or so for crude. Not quite seeing that at the pumps yet, but hopefully we see that soon. And we're still sitting right around $5 for diesel and $4 for gas. But, yeah, it's been a little bit of a different market. Everything's kind of in a weird hold position.
[00:03:10] No one is quite sure what steps to take next, including, like, you know, the Fed chairman putting a hold on the interest rates. Not quite sure what to do there. It's a weird market because it's not reflecting what we've seen throughout the past. So a little different right now. So let me throw this out for everybody to kind of think through. So Kevin Warsh had his first meeting over at the Fed over the last couple of days. I'm sure Donald and company were hoping he was going to drop the interest rates. He decided not to.
[00:03:41] Their reason inflation's a little bit out of control and they don't know what to do. So they're just going to wait and see. I personally think the discussions on war and the opening of the Strait of Hormuz and some of those things have a lot to do with it. Not to mention the G7 meetings were underway this week as well. Well, that's a big twist in, you know, how's that all going to come out? In other words, where are people sitting? People are backing Trump and praising Trump internationally speaking. But yet no one's really seen the agreement. So that's kind of strange indeed. But what's interesting to me is gold and silver seem to track almost instantly.
[00:04:11] The price goes down. People pay spot plus a little margin. And you can get in on the winds or whatever you want to say, the rise and fall really quickly. When it comes to oil, it seems like the price of oil drops. A barrel of oil, what, $74 right now or something? That's quite a bit down. But yet we're not going to see that translate into the market anytime soon, right? Correct. So you have certain assets that are referred to as price sticky.
[00:04:38] When their price goes up, even though the commodity base for that, you know, the barrel of crude oil drops, you know, 25% or so, you're not going to necessarily see that in the end products movement in price. Because it takes a while for that sticky price to slowly work its way down. So, you know. But you know what happens to me though, Heath?
[00:05:07] I don't know if it works this way for you, but my price seems to be sticky. It's only like a one-sided sticky, you know, deal for me. When it goes up, it sticks. And when it comes down, it doesn't really stick or do that very much. I don't know. So it's price sticky in the sense that if it gets up there, it holds up there. If it drops, it can bounce really quickly in a day or so.
[00:05:32] So like when oil's shot up real quick, it's not sticky on the downside. It's sticky on the move up. It's sticky on the move back down. Yeah. Anyway, very interesting indeed. Now, President Trump is touting this big deal. I guess they made a big deal of it. They were going to sign it last Sunday. Then they didn't. They were going to sign it this Friday on Trump's birthday. And all of a sudden, they came out of the gate and signed it two days early.
[00:05:59] But what's interesting to me is you have... I don't know how to respond to this exactly. Basically, Trump said negotiations with Iran are advancing, but stressed that the agreement is not final. Now, that headline came out before it was final, I guess. But warned that force remains still a pivotal option if they don't comply or cooperate. Well, so whether they sign something or not, there's still negotiations. The finer details are still to be worked out.
[00:06:29] Well, then the next headline says White House signals Congress will review an agreement. Do they just review it after he signs it? I mean, I don't really understand how this is working. Because in my mind, Congress is supposed to give advice and consent and kind of work through that. I doubt after the fact, number one. And number two, if we're negotiating after we sign it, what are we even reviewing? Something that's partially half-baked? I mean, it doesn't make any sense to me. Yeah.
[00:06:58] The horse before the cart kind of a thing. Yeah, we definitely need to get congressmen and senators more on board with these things. There's a voting record behind them. You know, we don't even vote to go to war anymore. It's just we go to war. Congress and Senate, they need to be actively a part of that so we can either decide to not vote them back in or to keep voting for them
[00:07:26] if we agree or disagree with things that are going on in the world. But just to go to war and have no one's say from Congress to the Senate, like, that's not how this works. The only time that we... I've heard of us doing this, and part of the reason why we do this is because if you don't declare war, you don't have to follow all of the Geneva Conventions. You don't have to keep all the rules that hold you back
[00:07:53] from doing things that may be deemed as shady or illegal underneath the Geneva Conventions. So we just haven't voted for war since World War II. So we need to get back to giving the opportunity to all of the individuals who've been voted in to actually play their part and to be on record as how they voted. Amen to that.
[00:08:21] Well, a new analysis finds that Americans should face the highest summer electricity bills on record, so more than they've ever seen. And they say regional price pressures are going to increase and everything else. And, you know, the problem with the negotiations that are going on here is when we have this deal where we're negotiating with Iran, we've got an agreement that's kind of signed, Congress is supposed to review, but yet I'm not sure what they're reviewing.
[00:08:50] What's signed or the future negotiations or, you know, and now it says this, the United States and G7 allies agreed on initial steps aimed at increasing pressure on Russia while backing the Ukraine. Well, I don't mean to be rude. It sounds like everything's moving, but at the same time it sounds like nothing has changed, Heath. Yeah. What's different? Headlines for headlines sake, I guess.
[00:09:21] I mean, I don't mean to be rude. I'm just saying I don't really even understand, you know. I mean, I guess Trump signed something, but, you know, how many people have really reviewed it? And what good does it do to review it after the fact? It's not like you can make any changes, right? Yeah. Or do you say, hey, Donald, hold up. I need this final change before you sign. Well, no, it's too late, right? Yeah. No, it's... Everything's kind of getting rushed.
[00:09:49] And there's a big squeeze on a lot of different things. And, you know, the power bills and everything else this summer. We got kind of a first pulse on the economy locally here. And, you know, Utah's supposed to have one of the best economies in the nation. And Utah County is one of the best in the state. So this economy, you know, for it to struggle here, because we've seen a lot of these price fluctuations in gold and silver. And usually when you see drops,
[00:10:19] you know, a lot of people come in here and pick up a lot of precious metals. But these drops, we haven't seen... I mean, it dropped down to 60, you know, going from almost 90 down to 60 within about a month and a half period. And we didn't see anyone really come in. Like, there's a... Everyone's, like, holding their breath right now as to what to do with everything, whether they're going to have more expenses through fuel or electricity,
[00:10:47] and they don't have the excess money to put into savings like this with silver and gold. But it's a very interesting feel right now in the economy. So I'm surprised about that, personally. All right. The other thing that's kind of interesting is big companies are not waiting. Fox News announced plans to purchase Roku in a stock and cash transaction deal.
[00:11:16] $22 billion with the deal expected to close, I guess, early 2027, pending government approval. I want to talk about that government approval stuff for a second, because why does the government have to approve every deal? Who puts them in charge? And they say when they're kind of too big, then the government decides they have a vested interest. It's very strange. We'll talk about it with Heath Perkins in a second. This is Liberty RoundTable Podcast.
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[00:13:15] We'll be right back. All right. Back with you live. Heath Perkins with me, ladies and gentlemen. Honest Money Report. Heath Perkins is with freewatercoinco.com doing a phenomenal job helping you understand and get involved in the precious metal business. If you want new mismatic coins for profitability, they can help you with that. If you say, I don't want all that fluff. I just want gold and silver and real money, and I want to keep the margins thin,
[00:13:44] and I want to do a great job, they'll be your partner to get that done too. Freewatercoinco.com. And, Heath, we are talking about this idea. I'm just saying, man, I don't know what's going to happen in this economy. I look at it and go, everything seems to be changing rapidly, but yet at the same time, it seems to stay the same. Gold, silver, oil down. What does that do to the dollar, sir? Dollars, it's strengthening a little bit right now.
[00:14:10] And, I mean, it's this final hold on to being the world currency. Like, this is, you know, the U.S., if we didn't do certain things, we wouldn't be holding on to this reserve currency. And the move that we've been seeing has been kind of a fight back and forth for which system is going to move forward. Whether or not America stays where it's at as a world leader,
[00:14:40] or whether or not that dollar reserve currency is taken away from us, that status, and we go to something else. I mean, during the Davos meetings, they talked about the Western system is broken and we need to change it. So there is movement to shift things from the U.S. dollar to something else. But right now, the moves that have been taken into effect have truly strengthened the dollar.
[00:15:07] Most people don't understand, but the amount of oil that has been, you know, removed from China's input, because they have a lot of oil that comes to the Strait of Hormuz, that decreases the Eastern powers by us coating off those supplies and the rest of the world having to turn to America if that stays closed. So this move has really strengthened the U.S. Whether or not that was the intention, I don't know.
[00:15:37] But, yeah, the dollar has strengthened because of this, and so you're seeing the things that would hedge against the dollar, gold and silver and other things, you know, losing strength. And people looking back towards, you know, okay, the dollar is sitting where it needs to be. We don't need to decrease interest rates according to the Fed. So things are somewhat stable at the moment. We don't need to encourage people to borrow money right now.
[00:16:04] We don't need to encourage people to save money right now with raising the interest rates. And so, yeah, the dollar is taking a position of strength right now due to all this. I want to throw out my thoughts of why what's happening is happening so that you can make some comments on this because I think this is really relevant for people to understand, Heath. Here's what I think is going on. I think that the world started to get a little bit cocky. They're like, hey, we think Trump's weak. The Democrats are making some strengths.
[00:16:33] MAGA's ripped apart. We see from the outside all the internal turmoil. It's time to kind of make our move. We've already got, you know, our own kind of currency stuff going on with the – oh, what's that thing called they've got going on? The BRICS. Yeah, the BRICS. We've got our BRICS going on. We know that America's struggling with trade. Trump's made all these claims, but then Congress has shut him down. We believe the internal turmoil in the United States – we believe the United States is weak. We're going to take advantage of that. So they started cranking up and taking advantage of it.
[00:17:03] Then they realized, wait a minute, America's way stronger than we think. Like, they're maybe not as strong as they used to be, but they got a lot more mojo and a lot more weapons in their arsenal than we thought they did. Not only from a wartime point of view and physical war, but I'm talking about economically and otherwise. And so I think when Trump went to the G7, I think when Trump decided to spank Iran, when Trump decided to go ahead and, you know, do this and do that and make this change and that change and call in tariffs,
[00:17:30] and then people went, whoa, whoa, hold on, whoa, he's got a whole lot more levers than we thought he did. And, yeah, it's not as strong as it once was, but yet it's way stronger than we kind of realized. We better kind of back off and pay tribute to Trump a little bit right now or things aren't going to go sideways, not in our favor. We need the United States to still be the greatest exporter of money and the greatest importer of products the world's ever known for a little more time until we get stronger and America gets a little weaker. We can't jump the gun on this.
[00:17:58] And so they've all kind of backed off a bit going, OK, let's cooperate here. It won't be forever. It'll be temporary. But nevertheless, I think that's what's kind of made the change, even though everything seems the same on the surface. I think really what happened is Trump flexed the muscle and people went, whoa, I guess he's got some points. And yes, there's still validity here. You think I'm off? What do you think? No, I think there's there's validity there.
[00:18:23] I feel like part of this flex, you know, is going to lead to some kind of a peace deal in the Middle East and, you know, getting a ceasefire. I think Trump is the individual who's going to do that. So there's a lot that. That the rest of the world is seen and, you know, this is the direction that we're.
[00:18:51] I don't know, I always go back to a certain comment that was made by Shakespeare as the whole world is a stage. I just feel like this is part of the play. This is part of the the this the stage that has to be set in order for certain things to to to happen in the future. But, yeah, we we did flex our muscles. And yes, you know, we showed the weakness of a lot of our allies, which was we called them out on it.
[00:19:20] And it was not the, you know, the the funnest thing to see with us losing strength. A lot of our allies. I like that. We made some stumbles and look kind of foolish a little bit. But at the same time, I think some of the public stuff was to mock Trump and to make him look foolish. But behind the scenes, I think there's a lot more leverage than we realize. You mentioned the whole world's a stage from Shakespeare, and I agree with that.
[00:19:44] But I also want to refer to, you know, when we the Americans beat the British back in the day, the British sung the world turned upside down. And I think that's kind of the case here, too. I think as we flex our muscle, people went, whoa, the mojo of America can turn the world upside down. We better kind of fly right for a time here. And I don't think it'll last forever because I think we are getting weaker and they're getting stronger. The longer we're an immoral nation, the weaker we're going to get.
[00:20:08] The longer the other nations use everything we give them, you know, trade imbalances and finances. I mean, we built the military industrial complex war machine for China and Russia and just about everybody else. And so as a result of that, yes, we've been the king of the currencies. But at the same time, we've rewarded everybody else so graciously that now they're kind of, you know, just saying, hey, we'll back off and let you continue to build us.
[00:20:33] We don't want to jump the gun here, but I think there will be a day when they will have enough strength and we'll have enough weakness where they won't back down so easily. They won't cave like they've done now. They won't be singing the world turned upside down. They'll be saying the world's the stage and now it's time for us to have our curtain call, baby. What do you think? Well, no, I agree. I agree.
[00:20:54] This move, like you were saying, like us being a nation that's losing its morals, we can't continue to be a beacon when we lose our morals. And so this direction that we're taking is a struggle. But at the same time, you have one of the things that's going to I would say this is kind of morally. I have to let my cat outside real quick anyway.
[00:21:27] It's OK. Just keep going. We're all good. So there's so much going on in the world, economically speaking, that it's hard to put a finger on it. But what do you think is going to happen? Are we just going to have sky high gas prices and electricity prices all summer and no relief? Or do you think something's going to come to the table for relief? Yeah, no, I think we're going to have higher prices. It's just across the board. The Fed really doesn't want to encourage borrowing right now because they're afraid of more inflation.
[00:21:55] You have a lot of the things that I'm trying to focus on and trying to figure out how we can overcome it is, you know, a nation isn't really truly in a moral position if they are in debt to everyone else. So, like, we are in such debt that, you know, and the world is in a lot of debt. So, like, all this debt that's going around worldwide, it's a struggle.
[00:22:19] And when the debt gets called in or if it's defaulted on, that's my concern. Because it seems like simultaneously every nation across the world is coming into the same form of debt. And they're coming to that point where they can't even afford their interest payments. And so, if we continue to increase interest rates, we're just revolving old debt that we've had that has to be revolved
[00:22:48] because you don't pay it off into higher interest rates. And we increase the interest rates we're paying on everything. We still have years to go with these higher interest rates we've been seeing recently. And they're not even high compared to, you know, the 70s and the 80s when we were seeing in the teens. Those interest rates, we're not even anywhere near that. But yet the pressure that we're receiving from the interest payments on our debt is going to suffocate us. And it's looking like that's going to happen to a lot of nations.
[00:23:18] And so, can we hold out? I mean, there might be a trick up someone's sleeve that they can pull this off and eliminate debt or figure something out or whatever it is. Trump seems to have enough individuals on his cabinet to where they can play around with a million different things and maybe come up with a few solutions that will work. But the debt really is what concerns me because if a nation can't pay its debts and obligations,
[00:23:46] who are we beholden to at that point then? Well, every time we negotiate those interest rates and swap debt out, so to speak, we end up with a situation where our credit rating becomes more and more and more in question. And we've already been derated or slowed down or whatever you want to call it, less ratings over the years. And if that gets worse, this is what I mean. They're just waiting and biding their time to where America won't be as strong as we want it to be. And then they'll pounce with a fervor.
[00:24:14] I pray it isn't true, but predict it will be the facts. Heath, thank you so much, sir. Yep. You're welcome, Sam. Thanks for having me on. FreeWaterCoinCo.com, ladies and gentlemen. Heath Perkins with me, doing a great job with the Honest Money Report right here on Liberty Roundtable Live. You can find us on radio, LibertyNewsRadio.com, LibertyRoundtable.com, all your favorite radio podcast services and more. We're also available on Roku, YouTube, X, Truth Social, and everywhere else.
[00:24:41] Spread the word, share the love, and God save the Republic of the United States of America. We'll be right back. We'll be right back.